Paul Articulates – The Winter Meetings are upon us

This week, Nashville will host the MLB winter meetings.  This is a week that Mack's writers circled on the calendar some time ago, as there are some very notable things that occur each year at the event.  

One thing that will happen on Tuesday is the draft lottery.  The eighteen teams that were not in the 2023 playoffs are entered into a lottery to determine the first six picks of the draft.  Our New York Mets have a 4.3% chance of winning the first pick given the odds in the lottery, but unfortunately there are penalties associated with their 2023 spending beyond the luxury tax threshold so the best they can get is the seventh pick.  The Tuesday event is just the lottery – the actual draft occurs in July, 2024.

Another interesting facet of the meetings is Thursday’s Rule 5 draft.  This draft enables teams to “poach” a minor league player from another team that had not protected them with a position on the 40-man roster.  For more on that, please refer to my previous article on the subject, “The Rule 5 Draft”.

New rules will be discussed and either enacted or rejected.  Last year was a very significant year for rules changes, as the pitch clock, sizes of the first and third base bags, and pickoff attempt limits were imposed with very noticeable impacts on the game.  This year should not to be as dramatic, but a slight shortening of the pitch clock will be discussed and the future of “robot umps” in MLB should be a hot topic.

The thing that I most look forward to is the big name free agent signings and trades.  Even though the signing period has been open since the World Series ended, the winter meetings are typically the time that some of the off-seasons’ big announcements are made.  Teams have been busy up to this point, mostly signing fringe players to minor league deals, offering some contract extensions, and participating in minor trades.  

The Mets as you know have been very focused on building up their infrastructure, signing Scott Havens as their President of Baseball Operations for the business side of the team, adding leadership for their scouting and player development organizations, and shoring up the coaching staff.  But that doesn’t mean they were inactive on the players side – we have already seen several moves at the marginal end of the player spectrum with some minor league deals, a one-year contract for utility player Joey Wendle, and the addition of an SP5 in Luis Severino.  This is the tip of the proverbial iceberg, as there are signs of much bigger deals in the works, some of which may be announced during this coming week.

This is the first off-season of the David Stearns era, and he has a tightrope to walk, balancing the long term competitiveness of the team with the short-term (read 2024) success of the Mets.  To date he has been using some of the techniques he learned in Milwaukee, using inexpensive minor league contracts and spring training invites to take a flier on some fringe players.  But don’t underestimate his ability to craft the big deals with his new budget.  I expect a notable addition or two in the big name category this week.

Another superb thing Stearns has done was to purge the 40-man roster of many of last year’s minor contributors.  Many were surprised that the team passed the deadline for protecting players from rule 5 with only 28 players on the 40-man roster.  This is a “fresh look” perspective that new leadership can bring to overcome that tendency to over-extend the welcome to players whose value to the team have diminished.  For those of you familiar with the “Stockholm Syndrome”, it is a psychology term that describes how prisoners sometimes spend so much time with their captors that they feel empathy towards them.  The “Stockholm Syndrome” analogy in baseball is hanging on to players that contributed greatly to the team in the past, but retain their role long after their productivity wanes.   Stearns had the independent viewpoint that allowed him to make a more objective assessment and cut loose guys that others couldn’t.  Now there is room for rule 5 additions, trades, and free agent acquisitions that build towards the goal of a sustainable winner.

Look for some noteworthy Mets news this week – I am hopeful that it will propel Mets fans out of the negative feelings from a failed 2023 season.